All Posts in Leadership

|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

Okay, I admit it. It was deliberate.

In last week’s column, in addition to misspelling bric-a-brac and messing up the barrels-to-pints conversation factor (it should have been 336 pints per barrel (somehow, Googling, I found the only site on the entire Internet that had it wrong) I quite intentionally ignored quite a few factors that have an impact on total CO2 emissions:

  • The specific gravity of oil. A pint of oil weighs closer to 0.9 pounds.
  • Hydrogen. It’s about 15% of your average hydrocarbon.
  • Lubricants and plastics: Not all petroleum is burned.
  • Natural gas and logs: We burn more than coal and oil.
  • Bovine flatulence: It adds methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

Why did I ignore all these factors? The answer is the subject of this week’s column: My goal was a first-order approximation.

First-order approximations answer two critical questions for managers who have too much to deal with and too little time with which to deal: Whether a subject is worth pursuing further, and what to consider as the default assumption.

They aren’t intended to drive final decision-making. That requires more thorough analysis, should the first-order approximation suggest it’s worth performing.

Here are a few guidelines, useful whether your goal is to understand CO2 emissions, to invest in improving a particular business process, or to spend more corporate time and energy improving customer relationships:

  • Use approximations. 3 instead of pi is fine, for example. If you used 3.14159, you might fall victim to the false-precision syndrome — the impression you’ve produced a comprehensive analysis and not a first-order approximation.
  • Exclude everything that looks a lot smaller than what you include. The more small factors you exclude, the more likely they’ll cancel each other out. Look at the list above. Three of the factors would reduce the estimate, two would increase it.
  • Exclude feedback loops. This one is complicated. Bear with me.Some feedback loops are “in-band” (my term). In-band feedback loops are proportional, self-limiting, and smaller than the phenomenon itself. The more CO2 we emit, for example, the more the oceans dissolve, but never all of the excess emissions.Other feedback is out-of-band — triggered rather than proportional. The failure of the Gulf Stream, used to explain the new ice age in The Day After Tomorrow, would be an example if it weren’t so far-fetched. Out-of-band feedback is far too complex to include in a first-order approximation.

    Then there are false feedback loops. Increased absorption of CO2 by trees is a popular example. Some basic biology: When animals exhale CO2 it’s the result of metabolism — the equivalent of an operating budget. When plants absorb it, though, it’s to add biomass — a balance sheet effect.

    Trees could only absorb more CO2 than we emit if the net tree biomass on Earth was increasing. The opposite is true, so this is a false feedback factor.

  • Don’t nitpick and don’t allow nitpicking. This isn’t the place for it. The question to ask is, “If you’re right, would it change our decision in any way?” If the answer is no then it’s nitpicking and should stop.

And finally, for those who wonder why I bring up non-IT issues like global warming, a simple answer: When I read the newspaper and encounter something interesting, I always ask how I can apply it to my daily work.

Don’t you?

* * *
By the way:

Among the more persistent global warming half-truths is that in the 1970s, scientists were predicting an ice age. It’s proponents always cite “Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages,” (J.D. Hays, John Imbrie, N.J. Shackleton, Science, December 10, 1976).

It says, “A model of future climate based on the observed orbital-climate relationships, but ignoring anthropogenic effects, predicts that the long-term trend over the next several thousand years is toward extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.”

It also says, “Such forecasts must be qualified in two ways. First, they apply only to the natural component of future climatic trends — and not to such anthropogenic effects as those due to the burning of fossil fuels. Second, they describe only the long-term trends, because they are linked to orbital variations with periods of 20,000 years and longer.”

Legally, the half-truth isn’t perjury — three authors makes it “scientists” and sometime in the next 20,000 years is a prediction of an ice age.

But did I say half-truth? My first-order approximation is that it’s a 0.145% truth at best.

Comments

|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

Ongoing issues, discussions, and brick-a-brak:

Some facts: Earth’s radius = 3,950 miles. One mile = 63,360 inches. Surface area of a sphere = 4*pi*radius^2. Atmospheric pressure at ground level = ~14.5 pounds per square inch.

Estimates (from various Googled sources): Human oil consumption per year = 30,660,000,000 barrels. One barrel = 252 pints. A pint’s a pound the world around. Human coal combustion per year: 6,500,000,000 tons. Oil and coal = mostly carbon. Carbon’s atomic weight = 12. Carbon dioxide’s atomic weight = 44. Atmospheric CO2 concentration = 380 parts per million.

With these facts, any middle school student should be able to compute the weight of the atmosphere and how much CO2 humans add to it annually (38 billion tons = 6.66 parts per million = 1.8%).

The connection to everyday business situations: As with global warming, every business decision (whether to replace an aging system, for example) depends in part on who has the burden of proof. Usually, those who recommend action bear it, as “do nothing” is the default decision, but that’s just habit. For global warming, I’d say the arithmetic places it squarely on the other side.

Choose carefully in your business decisions.

Holiday card follow-up: To disapprove or not to disapprove, that was the question I asked. Several readers suggested that disapproval is quite appropriate. Using my Tiger Woods/Britney Spears example to illustrate, they contended it makes sense to choose carefully who you emulate.

Personally, I don’t think you should ever choose who to emulate. Few people are entirely admirable in every aspect of their character and behavior, so we’re all better off figuring out what we admire about someone and emulating that. Figuring out who we admire and emulating everything about them is worse than a bad idea. It’s creepy.

Something not to emulate: my spelling. The correct version is “Britney.” Sorry, ma’am.

A really bad trend: Using compliance as an excuse. “The auditors require it.” “We might get sued.” “Sarbanes/Oxley won’t allow it.”

First of all, if it’s a good idea, Sarbanes/Oxley almost certainly does allow it. It simply requires that you document it to death. Likewise your auditors. As for getting sued, yes, you might. While you’re more likely to get sued if you do something you shouldn’t, American jurisprudence allows anyone to sue anyone else, for almost no reason at all.

If you allow the risk of being prosecuted for breaking the law to stop you, you might ask why you think breaking the law is a good idea in the first place. But if someone allows the risk of some bottom-feeder suing them to stop them from making prudent business decisions, shame on them. Businesses shouldn’t put anyone this timid in charge of anything important.

Our ongoing obsession with metrics: When setting goals, many consultants advocate the SMART formulation from Paul J. Meyer’s “Attitude Is Everything.” SMART stands for “Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Tangible.”

So here’s a question: If you choose to be SMART, will you ever decide that customer satisfaction matters? After all, it isn’t specific, is exceptionally difficult to measure, and is largely intangible.

For most businesses, it’s also the single most important determinant of success.

From the Department of Contractual Stupidity and Sleaziness: Here’s some standard boilerplate you’ll find in huge numbers of privacy policies:

“[Company name] may modify this Agreement’s terms and conditions at any time without notice. Continued use of the Services and the Site after a change in this Agreement, a change in the Privacy Policy, or after implementation of any other new policy constitutes acceptance of such change or policy.”

Don’t they know how slimy this makes them look? Especially since many of these websites provide no way to contact a human being.

In the same category, my new digital camera, an otherwise fine piece of equipment, allows me to install the accompanying software on only a single computer. The question: Why on earth do they care? The software is only useful with the camera.

A final PowerPoint question: We’re all agreed the world has seen lots of bad PowerPoint. Three questions remain. The first is whether this is just another example of Sturgeon’s Law (90 percent of everything is crud). The second is whether the bad presentations that made use of PowerPoint would have been even worse without it.

I suspect the answers are yes and yes. Many who aren’t professional presenters still have to present from time to time. What matters isn’t whether PowerPoint makes their presentations good. It’s whether it makes them better than they’d have been otherwise. So the third question is what we should consider to be the default assumption.

Comments